A ‘secret panel’ shaped America's new food guidelines, lawsuit alleges
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has sued HHS and the USDA, claiming a "secret panel" of industry insiders shaped the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines.
A variety of legumes, including beans and lentils, a food group PCRM says was omitted from the new dietary guidelines despite evidence of its health benefits. Credit: wuestenigel, CC BY 2.0
The United States government is being sued over its 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, after a physicians' group claimed a 'secret panel' of industry insiders illegally influenced their creation.
The Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed the lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), seeking to withdraw the guidelines, released January 7, 2026. The group says the panel was handpicked by the two departments.
The guidelines emphasize meat and dairy products, something PCRM says is connected to the guidelines being assembled in haste by consultants with a vested interest in the meat, dairy, and low-carb diet industries.
The guidelines were communicated to Americans through an inverted “food pyramid” that placed meat and dairy as primary protein sources. They have attracted criticism from health professionals over what critics call double messaging on saturated fats, as well as the priority given to animal-based products and the omission of legumes, despite scientific evidence supporting their health benefits.
"The government allowed the meat and dairy industries to ghostwrite the Dietary Guidelines," said Physicians Committee President Neal D. Barnard, M.D. "They put money in industry's pocket and cholesterol in Americans' arteries."
The complaint has roots in a dispute that started in January, when PCRM petitioned both agencies to withdraw the guidelines over the same concerns.
After a transparent two-year process, the independent Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, made up of 20 independent experts, produced a report recommending, in part, that the guidelines encourage Americans to consume more plant-based foods, prioritize beans and other plant-based proteins over animal-derived sources, and make water, rather than milk, their first-choice beverage.
In the lawsuit, PCRM says that the government agencies ignored this report and instead assembled a different panel of food-industry professionals, whose findings differed significantly and shaped the new guidelines.
PCRM says eight of the nine members of this panel had connections to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Dairy Council, the American Egg Board, the National Pork Board, or the low-carbohydrate diet industry. The new Guidelines took only three months to produce.
The lawsuit says the result is “Dietary Guidelines that are not based on the preponderance of scientific evidence” and instead “embrace saturated fats, halve the recommended fruit and vegetable servings, remove daily alcohol intake limits, and promote fad diets for use as medical treatment” for “individuals with certain chronic diseases.”
It also argues that “the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines pose dangers to children, whose school food programs must adhere to the Dietary Guidelines; to individuals with medical conditions who might follow the baseless medical advice incorporated into the Dietary Guidelines; and to Americans who are at risk for diet-related diseases, including obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, and might follow the scientifically unfounded Dietary Guidelines, which are designed to promote fatty, high-cholesterol products of industries with which the Dietary Guidelines’ authors are affiliated.”
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